The Usual Suspects Review

SPOILER ALERT

“After that my guess is that you will never hear from him again. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that... he is gone.”

These words mark the end of film number 24 on the top 1000 films of all time: Bryan Singer’s 1995, The Usual Suspects.

What’s it about: Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey) is the only survivor of five men in a heist gone wrong.  The five men were hired to hijack a $91 million of shipment of cocaine reaching the enigmatic crime lord Keyser Soze.  However, the hijacking goes wrong when four out of the five men involved in the heist are killed.

The Good: Much of the film is in flashback, as U.S Customs special agent Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) questions Verbal about the job and the other men involved.  As Verbal goes into more detail about each man, his account of events becomes increasingly convoluted and complicated.  Whilst this did become confusing at times, it also made the film more engaging, as the audience found out more about each separate character.  The primary and secondary cast were great as well from Chazz Palminteri playing a detective who wants the truth to Gabriel Byrne playing Keaton, the leader of the heist crew, to Pete Poselthwaite, who is always great, as Keyser Sozey’s right hand man, Kobayashi.  

However, the best actor in this film is Kevin Spacey.  Up until the film’s conclusion, he tricks the film’s audience and Dave Kujan into thinking he’s nothing more than a stupid, pitiable cripple whom nobody takes seriously, when he is actually SPOILER ALERT, the enigmatic Keyser Soze.  This reveal was a great and a very unexpected twist. Up until this point, Kujan, and myself, thought Keyser Soze was actually Keaton.  However, it was Kevin Spacey’s subtle, yet powerful acting as a man too stupid to be trusted that really made the twist good.

The Bad: As the story is told in flashback and jumps from character, the narrative becomes fragmented and disjointed, and I did get confused from time to time.  I also did mix up the characters a lot.  In fact other than Verbal and Keaton, I didn’t really know who the other men on the heist were.  There was also a sub-narrative that saw Giancarlo Esposito playing another police officer trying to find the truth behind the heist by questioning another survivor of the explosion.  However, I don’t think this sub-narrative worked as I failed to see its relevance to the main narrative and I also didn’t like how it didn’t have a proper outcome.

The Ugly: Keyser Soze becomes a feared crime lord by doing what others won’t.  After his wife is raped and one of his three children is killed by a rival, he quickly kills his wife and remaining children, rather than have them live in the shame of what happened.  Twisted justice maybe, but definitely ugly.

Rating: Awesome

A very intriguing story that was told brilliantly and had great acting, but it was also confusing in places and it has a sub-narrative that doesn’t go anywhere.  This film is also very bloody with a body count that goes much higher than se7en. 

 

It's a Wonderful Life Review

It’s a Wonderful Life Review

Now a film that is guaranteed to leave you with a smile on your face: number 23 on the top 1000 films of all time, Frank Capra’s 1946, It’s a Wonderful Life.

What’s it about: George Bailey is a man down on his luck.  His housing loan business is threatened with bankruptcy and on Christmas Eve, he contemplates suicide.  This is when his guardian angel appears and shows him what his small town of Bedford Falls would have been like, if he had never been born.

The Good: This film is charming, heart-warming and uplifting without ever becoming cheesy or overly-sentimental, which I think is one of the film’s greatest strengths.  Its engagement with themes of community, family and collectivism become most apparent, when the Bedford Falls townspeople rally around the main character and donate more than enough money to save his business.  This film ends with the townspeople singing in unison, whilst the Bailey family reflect on this Christmas miracle.  Whilst this sounds very corny on paper, it was portrayed in such a way, where it was a very sweet and left me with a big smile on my face.  

The main character also worked well as a character, as his conflicts were so believable and relatable.  George Bailey as a young man dreams of travelling the world, before becoming an architect and designing buildings that would bring happiness to all.  However, he is forced to take over his father’s business after his father dies.  The fact that George Bailey’s goals and drams are blocked by life, is what makes him such a believable, interesting and engaging character.  James Stewart is great in this role.  From a happy, go-lucky young man to a stressed man at his wit’s end, James Stewart plays each part brilliantly.

The Bad: You know what? I can’t think of anything significant enough to warrant criticism.

The Ugly: Potter, the film’s antagonist, is very much an Ebenezer Scrooge character.  Scrooge is not a pretty character.

The fourth film to be rated as superlative and the first of the Classic Hollywood films to be rated so.  This film is a great uplifting tale about struggle and personal redemption and with James Stewart, Donna Reed and Henry Travers, this film has all of the usual suspects of a film from the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Once Upon a Time in the West review

SPOILER ALERT 

Number 22 on top 1000 films of all time is Sergio Leone’s 1968 Once Upon a Time in the West. 

What’s it about: Jill Mcbain is a recent widow whose husband, has recently bought the land of Sweetwater, where a new railway station will be built, has been killed by Frank (Henry Fonda) intending to frame a bandit called Cheyenne for the murder.  Jill teams up with Cheyenne and a mysterious Harmonica-playing gunman called Harmonica (Charles Bronson) to take revenge on Frank.

The Good: Like the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, this film has a great musical score, which really served to ratchet up the tension.  What makes the score even better is the film’s sound effects that are incorporated into the musical score.  For example, the film’s opening scene has sound effects like a tapping boot or a buzzing fly, which merged well into the sound rack, thus further contributing to the tension-building in the film.  The best example of this is when Harmonica plays his harmonica and this is intertwined very well into the background musical score.  Also, like in the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, the camerawork was also great, alternating between long master shots showing the vast expanse of the Wild West to small closeups that emphasise little details in a scene.

The Bad: I really had trouble following this film from the outset.  I was confused from the beginning and it took me a while to settle into the film.  I had a vague idea of what was going on, but it was so vague that I had to constantly read internet synopses to try and catch up on everything that I missed.  I also got very confused over which character was which, especially with Frank and Harmonica, which I got very mixed up about.  As for the bandit Cheyenne, I was aware that he was in the film, but I wasn’t sure which character he was.

The Ugly: Frank proves what an ugly villain he can be when in a flashback it is revealed that he had an older brother stand upon his younger brother's shoulders with a noose around the former's neck.  Once the younger brother's strength gave out, the older brother died.

Rating: Good

Whilst the film had a great musical score and interesting camerawork, I found it too difficult to follow and the characters confusing, which detracted from the viewing experience for me.  Whilst none of these characters may not have been having wonderful lives, they were making the best out of the ones they had been given.

City of God Review

SPOILER ALERT

And number 21 of the 1000 greatest films of all time, we have the Brazilian crime drama, another foreign language classic, the 2002 City of God.

What’s it about: City of God is set in a slum in Rio De Janerio otherwise known as the City of God.  It focuses on two boys who grow up within the slum and the extreme crime that surrounds them.  The two boys are Rocket, the narrator, who aspires to escape the slum by becoming a photojournalist and L’il Dice, later L’il Ze, a psychotic child who soon grows to become the most feared drug lord in the City of God.  

The Good: This film was amazing.  Seriously.  It reminded me of why I started reviewing films in the first place.  City of God is dark, morally ambiguous, twisted and brilliantly depicts the world of organised crime.  It is gritty and brutal.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people get shot in one movie before.  One of its greatest strengths is its fragmented narrative, which rather than following a traditional linear timeline, jumps back and forth from story to story and character to character.  The film also had a very authentic and realistic feel to it.  I read on IMDB that the director hand-picked children straight out of slums, which further added to the realism.   

The characters were all very interesting too.  Even though, the cast was large, the film only explores the backstories of the primary characters, leaving the rest in mystery.  This all helped to add to the moral ambiguity of the film.  Rocket was also very interesting as a character.  Even though he is the narrator and the protagonist, he is very much on the periphery and of  everything.  For example, when L’il Ze enters a war with a rival drug lord, Carrot, Rocket just watches and doesn’t get involved.  L’il Ze was perhaps one of the scariest villains I have ever seen in a film.  He was a psychopath from a very young age.  In a particularly brutal scene, L’il Ze, only a very young boy, is left with a gun as a lookout, whilst an older crew rob a motel with a sworn rule not to kill anyone.  Unsatisfied with this role, L’il Ze scares the older boys away by falsely telling them the police had arrived, before shooting everyone in the hotel and taking any leftover money, whilst laughing manically.  At 18, L’il Ze then becomes top dog in the City of God by murdering all of his competition. 

I also really loved all of the camerawork in this film.  There were so many great uses of close-ups and freeze frames.  At some points, shakey cam was used, which helped to add to the film’s tension.  The flashback scenes were quite grainy and had a slight yellow filter, which I felt really added to the old-time feel of the shots.

The greatest part of the film was how it had a cyclical narrative and every event and story was connected and led onto the next.  For example, the character of Knockout Ned joins Carrot in fighting L’il Ze, after L’il Ze raped Ned’s girlfriend and shot his brother and uncle.  However, what gets Ned killed is Otto, a son of a security guard whom Ned murdered during a bank robbery.  Otto shoots Ned in the back as an act of revenge.  The best example of the film’s cyclical narrative is when at the movie’s conclusion, L’il Ze is gunned down by a gang of children (called the Runts) who want to take over his business.  They then make a list of all of the drug dealers they have to kill in order to become top dogs, in a way very reminiscent of L’il Ze’s rise to power.  For me, this was a great instance of what goes round comes around and how a life of crime can always come full circle.

The bad: Hmm, there were the occasional moments, where the film’s fragmented narrative did confuse me, but these moments were few and far between.

The Ugly: In the film’s most brutal scene, L’il Ze initiates a young boy into his gang by ordering him to shoot one of two Runts, children not older than ten, who have been causing trouble in L’il Ze’s territory.  If this isn’t ugly, I don’t know what is.

Rating: Superlative

A film worthy of a superlative rating if ever there was one.  This film is intense, gritty and dramatic and is wonderfully made.  It demonstrates what life is like in slums without romanticising it.  Arguably, this film is a modern-day western, although lacking in a once upon a time or cowboys walking off into the sunset.